Arctic Oil/Gas Neg



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Spills/Conservation Link

Your link turns are outdated- international conservation focus like the plan is part in parcel of the global neoliberal agenda


Corson ‘10

Catherine Corson, Environmental Studies, Mount Holyoke, 2010, Wiley Sience, Antipode Volume 42, Issue 3, pages 576–602, June 2010



The reduction of the state under neoliberalism,1 and the resulting reconfiguration of state, market, and civil society relations, has shifted the landscape of twenty-first century environmental governance, in particular opening up room for private actors to influence state policy. This article explores how the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s and its institutionalization in the 1990s underpinned the formation of a dynamic alliance among members of the US Congress, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), an evolving group of environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs)2 and the corporate sector around biodiversity conservation funding. By focusing strictly on internationalbiodiversity conservation this alliance—driven to a great extent by non-elected agents who are perceived to represent civil society despite their corporate partnerships—has been able to shape public foreign aid policy and in the process create new spaces for capital expansion. The arguments presented here forge new ground in academic conversations about conservation and neoliberalism by illuminating the concrete practices within US foreign aid through which new forms of environmental governance under neoliberalism are produced. Specifically, they draw on the work of intellectuals who document the opportunities for civil society groups provided by the downsizing of the neoliberal state (eg Castree 2008; Peck and Tickell 2002) to address a lacuna in three interrelated bodies of literature. Together, these works examine the neoliberalism of nature (eg Castree 2008; Heynen et al 2007), the growth of the big international conservation NGOs (BINGOs)3 and their increasing corporate linkages (eg Brockington, Duffy and Igoe 2008; Büscher and Whande 2007), and the contemporary move in conservation away from engaging local actors (eg Brosius and Russell 2003; Dressler and Buscher 2008). While these scholars unveil critical transformations in human–environment relations taking place in the name of conservation under neoliberalism, they have often elided the intricacies of the shifting and uneven power dynamics among state, market and civil society organizations through which such changes have emerged. By focusing on the inter-organizational relations entailed in US environmental foreign aid policy-making, this article helps to launch critical engagement with policy issues related to nature's neoliberalization, as called for by Castree (2007). At the same time, it responds to appeals for analysis of the micro-politics of foreign aid donors (Cooper and Packard 1997; Watts 2001), and particularly the sponsors of international conservation (King 2009), to advance an emerging scholarship that applies ethnographic methods to elucidate the internal workings of conservation and development funding institutions (eg Crewe and Harrison 1998; Lewis and Mosse 2006). In doing so, it illustrates how collaboration among the public and non-profit sectors have both reflected and contributed to a move within global environmentalism from an anti-capitalist stance in the 1960s and 1970s to its twenty-first century embrace of the market.

The plan specifically is apologia for US politicians who don’t want to confront resource depletion in the US


Corson ‘10

Catherine Corson, Environmental Studies, Mount Holyoke, 2010, Wiley Sience, Antipode Volume 42, Issue 3, pages 576–602, June 2010

Second, the strict focus on international  biodiversity has been fundamental to the development of an alliance among the BINGOs, USAID, corporate leaders and members of the US Congress behind US environmental foreign aid. By defining “the environment” as foreign biodiversity, to be protected in parks away from competing economic and political interests and in foreign countries, the BINGOs and allied partners have enticed US politicians and corporate leaders to support environmental foreign aid. They have created an avenue through which they can become “environmentally friendly” without confronting the environmental degradation caused by excessive resource consumption in the USA or the foreign and domestic investments of US corporations. These successful political strategies, aimed at mobilizing funding for foreign environmental issues, have contributed to the process by which environmentalism has become enrolled in the promotion of capitalist expansion. In fact, I contend that the international biodiversity conservation agenda has created new symbolic and material spaces for global capital expansion. First, it supplies a critical stamp of environmental stewardship for corporate and political leaders. Second, not only does it carve out new physical territories for capitalist accumulation through both the physical demarcation and enclosure of common lands as protected areas, but also through the growing capitalist enterprise that is forming around the concept of biodiversity conservation.

US is no less important than ____ - their keystone species arguments are silly


CNN ‘00

CNN News, March 17, 2000, “Nature: U.S. biodiversity in jeopardy, study shows,” http://articles.cnn.com/2000-03-17/nature/biodiversity.enn_1_previously-unknown-species-natural-heritage-study?_s=PM:NATURE



The study is the most complete inventory of Americas plants and animals to date. More than 200,000 native plants and animals double the previous estimate were documented. The study also reveals the United States is one of the most ecologically diverse countries in the world. It is home to 10 percent of all species found on Earth. Every year, some 30 previously unknown species of flowering plants are found in the country, according to the study. Thats the good news. The bad news is included in other key findings in the study Despite these trends, there is time to protect the countrys natural heritage, the study notes. Scientists are buoyed by the fact that the United States has a greater diversity of major ecosystems, from prairies to tundras to forests to deserts, than any other country in the world. The good news is Americans enjoy an incredibly rich natural heritage, from rare fish surviving in desert oases, to the worlds tallest trees Californias coastal redwoods to Hawaiis honeycreepers, colorful birds whose evolutionary story rivals that of the famous Darwins finches, noted Bruce Stein, lead author of the report. The bad news is that Americans risk losing much of the wealth if current trends continue.


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